But really, there's no substitute for just getting an instrument and fooling around with it until you can find your way around. Bass is nice for this since nobody expect you to do complex chord fingerings

What kind of bass are you looking at? Rondo Music has some great options and offers excellent build quality for shockingly cheap - I have a 5-string Jazz Bass clone from them with a solid ash body that sells for only $200, and it's awesome.

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.